Those experienced in retail selling of womens' clothing, most particularly persons in stores or store departments merchandizing lingerie, are well aware of the problems of maintaining a neat and presentable department. The garments are hung on and displayed on racks by the use of inexpensive, flat plastic hangers. Currently used hangers have a common defect in that they do not reliably retain the garment. Stated another way, the garment falls off too easily because the hanger simply does not have a good grip on the fabric of the garment.
The result is that as or while a customer picks up a hanger to inspect the garment, one side falls off so that the article of clothing hangs from one side of the hanger or the garment falls to the floor. The failure of known hangers to hold a garment reasonably securely is a source of frustration to store and department managers because so much employee time is spent rehanging and straightening the merchandize on the hangers to make the area neat and presentable.
Among the known prior art are the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 631,102; 1,607,749; 1,833,388; 1,969,896; 1,962,712; 2,129,871; 2,150,869; 2,222,231; 2,620,103; 2,991,919; 3,317,096; 3,378,180; 4,148,421; 4,623,079; and 4,629,102.
The patents to Bissonette et al., Singer, Carmack and Marble probably are the closest prior art to Applicant's configuration but each completely lacks the functional principles and structural design which Applicant has incorporated in his invention. The hangers in Tendrup, Shafarman and Levitt show the most commonly used types of display hangers but again they fail to solve the primary problem of providing an adequate grip on the garment fabric.
In any event none of prior art patented hangers either alone or in combination anticipates Applicant's unique design to be more fully described and disclosed hereinafter.